That The Works Of God Might Be Displayed

John 9:1-4 As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. INTRODUCTION Good morning. As you may know, my family and I were on vacation three weeks ago and for the past two weeks I’ve been working on a number of backlogged ministry projects; especially thinking carefully through the nature and content of our worship service. I look forward to sharing some of the fruit of my labor with you all in a sermon in the coming weeks. I want to publicly and enthusiastically thank Pastor Mike for preaching for the last three weeks. Thanks on a practical level for freeing me up to go on a vacation and to work on liturgy. But thanks even more for handling Haggai so well. I strongly suspect that the ideas of “consider your ways” (first sermon) and “Jesus as consecrated flesh, made an unclean woman clean when she touched the fold of His garment” (last sermon) will stay with me for a long time. With that, welcome back to the Gospel of John. In case you’re just joining us or just lost track of where we are, we’ve made our way to John 9. Overall, John wrote his Gospel in order to convince his readers that Jesus is the Christ, in order that they/we might believe in Him and gain eternal life. To zoom in a bit more, John 9 wraps up three chapters dedicated to Jesus’ teaching and interactions (primarily with Jewish leaders) at the Feast of Booths, just six months before His crucifixion. And zoomed in further still, John 9 records Jesus miraculously giving physical and then spiritual sight to a man born blind and the various reactions those things produced. We’ve already considered the healings (1-7, 37), the responses (8-34), and Jesus’ interpretation of it all (35-41). This morning we’re going to consider more carefully Jesus’ explanation for the man’s blindness. In particular, we’re going to consider the significance of the question “Why?” in times of suffering, the prevailing notion of the source of suffering in Jesus’ day, Jesus’ counter-cultural answer, and then a few broader truths on God’s relationship to suffering in the Bible. The main point of all of this is that God is working in and through every hardship in order to display His glory and bless His people. The main takeaways are for unbelievers to learn repentance from their suffering and for believers to find hope in the midst of every trial, knowing that God is working in and through every one. THE REASONING AND CONSISTENCY OF WHY One of the most consistent questions we ask when faced with hardship is, “why?”. It’s one of the most common questions I’m asked as a pastor when tragedy strikes. I’ve regularly asked it myself in times of deepest sorrow. The underlying assumption of the question seems to be that enduring a trial or loss is more bearable if we know there is some kind of good behind it or that will come out of it. Trials are hard. The idea that they might be in vain is harder still. And so, we long for an explanation that will help us endure them when they come. This response—the impulse to ask “why” when life is hard—is not new to us. It has been the steady response of mankind since the beginning of mankind. Long-barren Sarah wanted to know why the children she’d so longed for struggled so mightily within her when she finally became pregnant (Genesis 25:21-22). The daughters of Zelophehad—fatherless, brotherless, and without any male relatives—wondered why their father’s name should be blotted out when it came to distributing land in the Promised Land (Numbers 27:1). Likewise, the descendents of Joseph wondered why their por